Tim Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas - Day Seven

Wow, it's day seven already! The time is flying by and my mind has been constantly on the go, thinking of different design combinations, colors, and techniques! Am I the only one looking forward to day eight? :-) On today's tag, Tim demonstrated a masking technique. He has this nifty clear masking sheets that appear to work really well (need to add that to my growing shopping list) but I just used a plain 'ol piece of scrap cardstock as a mask for my tree. The shape of this tree, from a Unity set, isn't clearly defined so I was able to play around with color a bit and added some yellow behind the tree once all the color was on my tag. Once my tree was stamped, I used a distressing tool and sponges to add the red, green, and yellow ink onto the tag. Now is when my mask came in handy...I stamped a bunch of Papertrey swirls in snow white ink as well as a word stamp from SU!, and a few random polka dots from a PTI set on the tag background. This photo is a good shot of all three of the stamps used on the background as well as the swirls and another one of my faux metal tags. This time the tag was created using copper embossing powder and the number seven for...well day seven! I also embossed my sentiment in copper embossing powder, which shows up better in the photo below. Since my colors were dark on the tag background I opted for stamping my sentiment on a plain circle and attaching it with dimensional tape so it wouldn't get lost in the background.

The last element on my tag was to add some stickles to portions of the tree trunk and pears along with a hint of glossy accents on the bird and smaller pears. I also, finally, went a bit darker with my ink colors. I found that my colors weren't coming out quite as vibrant as Tim's so I used a heavier hand today and am happier with the results. Love those dark, rich colors! As always, creating my tag was a boatload of fun and I can't wait to see what's in store for tomorrow!!